Forum Discussion
tatest
Oct 30, 2015Explorer II
Broadband mobile data service. It is business, however much data you need, the cost is a cost of doing business, work that into your business plan.
Verizon has good coverage nationally, AT&T has good coverage in some places where Verizon is not licensed for business and might rely on smaller carriers for roaming.
If I were traveling everywhere, I would probably buy data plans with both providers, but with most of my time in what used to be SBC country, AT&T works better for me. When the Baby Bells started reconsolidating as mobile providers, both coasts ended up merging into Verizon, and the coasts are where most of the population exists.
You probably want LTE performance. That is going to limit where you stop. LTE is still mostly found in densely populated areas where 90% of the customers are, you don't find it so much in the empty places where people like to get away from civilization to camp. In a city of 30,000 with the headquarters of a large international corporation, I can get LTE downtown, I can get it along the main highway through the city east of downtown, but there are dead spots between, LTE disappears 1 mile west of the CBD, I'm down to Edge three mile out then no mobile data service at all until I reach the next town. You might be familiar with this if you get outside of Austin on rural roads, but not on the major highways, not in the suburbs, they get covered.
WiFi tends to be unreliable or slow in rural RV parks because hey, they can't get broadband service, so they do the best they can on a slow wire and share that with everybody over WiFi.
Same for going to the library. Libraries in towns with broadband service might have good enough connections to share. If they can't get affordable broadband, what they can provide might not be useful to you.
Companies like McD's can offer WiFi as a perk because they have to pay whatever it takes to get the connection to run their business, even if it means footing the bill for the optical cable all the way from the nearest telephone company office. RV parks often don't do enough business to support the cost, and they can still use dial-up to talk to the credit card processors.
Verizon has good coverage nationally, AT&T has good coverage in some places where Verizon is not licensed for business and might rely on smaller carriers for roaming.
If I were traveling everywhere, I would probably buy data plans with both providers, but with most of my time in what used to be SBC country, AT&T works better for me. When the Baby Bells started reconsolidating as mobile providers, both coasts ended up merging into Verizon, and the coasts are where most of the population exists.
You probably want LTE performance. That is going to limit where you stop. LTE is still mostly found in densely populated areas where 90% of the customers are, you don't find it so much in the empty places where people like to get away from civilization to camp. In a city of 30,000 with the headquarters of a large international corporation, I can get LTE downtown, I can get it along the main highway through the city east of downtown, but there are dead spots between, LTE disappears 1 mile west of the CBD, I'm down to Edge three mile out then no mobile data service at all until I reach the next town. You might be familiar with this if you get outside of Austin on rural roads, but not on the major highways, not in the suburbs, they get covered.
WiFi tends to be unreliable or slow in rural RV parks because hey, they can't get broadband service, so they do the best they can on a slow wire and share that with everybody over WiFi.
Same for going to the library. Libraries in towns with broadband service might have good enough connections to share. If they can't get affordable broadband, what they can provide might not be useful to you.
Companies like McD's can offer WiFi as a perk because they have to pay whatever it takes to get the connection to run their business, even if it means footing the bill for the optical cable all the way from the nearest telephone company office. RV parks often don't do enough business to support the cost, and they can still use dial-up to talk to the credit card processors.
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